Artificial Cervical Disc Replacement Lombard IL

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Artificial Cervical Disc Replacement - Justin Paquette, MD

Dr. Sechrest: Hello, I'm Dr. Randale Sechrest, your host for eOrthopod.TV. Today I have with me as my guest, Dr. Justin Paquette. Dr. Paquette is a neurosurgeon who practices complex spine surgery in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Paquette did his medical training at Albany Medical College. He then went on to complete residency in neurosurgery at the Harvard Tuss Combined Program in Boston, Massachusetts. From there he completed a fellowship in complex spine surgery in Los Angeles at Cedar-Sinai. Good afternoon, Justin.

Dr. Justin Paquette: Good afternoon.

Dr. Sechrest: Dr. Paquette, today what I'd like to discuss is a relatively new procedure called the artificial disc replacement, and we're specifically talking about artificial disc replacement in the neck. Tell us a little bit about this. I mean, this is a new procedure that seems to be very popular these days.

Dr. Justin Paquette: Sure. So essentially the purpose of an artificial disc is to preserve the normal motion of the spine. In the old days, we would just fuse a level, and we do this today as well, where we fuse a level and take the motion out of it so as to prevent any pressure on the nerve or the spinal cord. The artificial disc, however, instead of fusing two vertebrae together actually links in-between where the disc was, but allows bending, twisting, flexing, extending in all the normal directions. The main reason why this was developed was based upon a theory called adjacent segment degeneration. What this theory states is that if you take one segment of the spine and you fuse it, you've basically taken one motion segment out of the spine. So if you had, say, seven discs or six discs in the spine all doing certain amounts of movement, and you took one disc and stopped it from moving, now the other discs have to pick up the slack, and now they have a little more extra motion, extra stress, and they may wear out faster than they would have normally. So the reasoning behind developing the disc was that if we can preserve the motion perhaps we can prevent that adjacent segment degeneration, prevent the worsening stress in the other discs, and perhaps prolong the life of the neck.

Dr. Sechrest: Okay. So, if I understand you correctly, the artificial disc is really a new option, so to speak, for situations where otherwise you would have done an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion.

Dr. Justin Paquette: That's correct.

Dr. Sechrest: When you do an artificial disc, other than the advantage of retaining motion, do you get better pain relief, do you get a better result than you would get with your typical anterior cervical discectomy and fusion?

Dr. Justin Paquette: It's interesting. The data is just basically coming out right now from the FDA studies. It's showing at least equivalency, and in some times, superiority to standard fusion procedures. One of the reasons may be is that in fusions surgeries we can't use any kind of anti-inflammatories after surg...

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